Obama speaks after surveying damage caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Getty

May 20, 2010

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As the Gulf of Mexico oil spill spreads, President Obama's handling of the disaster is coming under fire from all sides. Scientists want more information, and conservatives have batted about the term "Obama's Katrina." But New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman says the more pertinent analogy is "Obama's 9/11": President Bush's "greatest failure," says Friedman, was his failure to translate Americans' response to 9/11 into a nation-building initiative. "President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11" the same way. Is Friedman's criticism fair?

Obama shouldn't wait — he should lead: Obama should be getting started now, say the editors of the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier. There's already a consensus that we "need to strengthen our energy-conservation efforts," yet "we keep wasting precious fuel, time and money while lagging recklessly behind other major industrial nations in that critical competition." Now there's no excuse. By waiting, Obama is "has further muddied the congressional to-do list." His job is to lead."Jump-start the energy debate"